Donald Trump’s lawyer went on the attack Thursday as he questioned and tried to discredit romance advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accuses the former president of raping her.
Attorney Joe Tacopina began his questioning in court by quoting Carroll’s own words to ask her to acknowledge that her account of events has been strange.
“Certain parts of this story are hard to fathom,” Carroll said.
Tacopina used the term “supposedly” when referring to the rape, which provoked an immediate and severe response from the writer.
“Supposedly not,” he said. “I was raped”.
Earlier in his testimony, he told how a chance encounter with Trump in a Bergdorf Goodman store in the spring of 1996 turned from frivolous flirting in the then-deserted women’s underwear section to a violent sexual assault in the dressing room. Carroll said Trump slammed her against a wall, pulled down her pants and entered her, until she kneed him and ran from her.
Trump, 76, is not expected to appear at the trial. He has repeatedly said that the encounter did not happen, that he does not know Carroll, and that she is not her “type.”
Carroll, 79, said she filed the lawsuit because “Donald Trump raped me and when I wrote about it he said it didn’t happen.”
Their lawsuit asks for an unspecified amount of damages and for Trump to retract his allegedly defamatory statements. He has not charged him criminally.
Thursday’s hearing started late after the lawyers met with the judge to discuss legal issues that were not disclosed.
On Wednesday, Trump wrote on his Truth Social social network that the case was a “made up FRAUD” and that her lawyer was a political operator.
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan sternly replied that the text was “totally inappropriate.”
“It appears that your client is certainly trying to speak to his ‘public,’ but what is most problematic for the jury is that he is speaking about things that should not be mentioned in this case,” the judge said.
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